Re: Ada Popularity: Comparison of Ada/Charles with C++ STL (and Perl)

["Randy Brukardt" <randy@rrsoftware.com>]

"Brian May" <bam@snoopy.apana.org.au> wrote in message
news:sa4ekks60xf.fsf@snoopy.apana.org.au...
...
> The following code (or something like it), I believe (not tested),
> should reduce the line count (and complexity) of the above:
>
> procedure Insert (Word : String) is
>    I : Wordcount_Maps.Iterator_Type;
>    B : Boolean;
>
> begin -- Insert
>    Insert (Map, To_Lower (Word), 0, I, B);
>    Replace_Element(I, Element(I) + 1);
> end Insert;

I was going to post something similar, as update-in-place is a premature
optimization in this case.

As far as I can tell, all this thread proves is that it would be nice if Ada
allowed redefinition of some of the operations (as opposed to operators)
like "in" and "()". And that the overriding concern for safety in Ada makes
code a bit longer. The latter is why there aren't implicit instantiations,
and why there isn't a routine like:

    function Modify_Element (Item : in Cursor) return access Element_Type;

(Humm, the other reason was that 3.6(11) caused trouble -- but that's been
repealed. I wonder if that decision should be revisited??)

                      Randy.